15th Annual William Form Lecture with Joanna Pepin

ABSTRACT

Young people’s approval of women in the public sphere has plateaued at high levels, support for mothers’ employment grew substantially before continuing slowing, and conventional ideology about gender in families waned for decades before showing a minor rebound. Contemporary young people express greater openness to a variety of future division‑of‑labor scenarios, although the breadwinner-homemaker arrangement remains desired. Given these trends, this talk presents new evidence using longitudinal panel data (1976–2021) tracing how desired work-family arrangements evolve as young adults age and encounter turning points such as marriage and parenthood. I will show that although recent cohorts enter adulthood with less desire for traditional arrangements than earlier cohorts, aging and family transitions continue to shift many toward more conventional preferences, limiting cohort-replacement effects. I will argue that the enduring power of gendered assumptions about work and family labor has been understated, posing challenges for the trajectory of the gender revolution.

BIO
Joanna Pepin is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto, and a faculty affiliate at the Centre for Global Social Policy. Prior to this position, she was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University at Buffalo (SUNY) and a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Population Research Center at the University of Texas - Austin. Dr. Pepin’s research focuses on family demography, gender inequality, and social change. Her work explores how gender norms and economic structures shape intimate relationships, such as attitudes and behaviors related to marriage, divisions of household labor, and whether couples pool their earnings. Dr. Pepin’s current projects investigate what constitutes an “equal” relationship and trends in how family transitions and gender beliefs relate to family ideals.